Realists, Nationalism, & inter-state violence: gaps in explaining conflict initiation An enduring debate within Nationalism studies is centred between Primordialists, who maintain that nations are distinct natural historical political units (Smith 1986), and Modernists, who argue that nations are “imagined communities” created by group relations between individuals (Anderson 1983, pp.6). Though most contemporary Nationalism scholars […]

In this short post I have selected one novel argument from an undergraduate essay I wrote in 2021 on the Turing test for artificial intelligence. The title of the essay was “If we could make a computer that performed well in the ‘Imitation Game’ proposed by Alan Turing. What, if anything, would that teach us […]

In this post I have have selected one of the points I made for an undergraduate epistemology and metaphysics essay on the existence of ordinary objects. In my essay I defended Daniel Z. Korman’s philosophy of ordinary objects by (I hope) improving on his refutation of the overdetermination argument against the existence of ordinary objects. Here […]

  Liam P. McLaughlin (2023) “Including Edinburgh’s Political Thinkers in Edinburgh University’s courses” [republished] This article is a republished extract from the 2022 Summer sitting of Edinburgh University’s SLICC: Student-Lead Individually-Created Course. Due to re-editing the text has been shortened, detailed analysis omitted, and sections on John Muir, Fredrick Douglas and John MacLean removed. Those […]

Liam P. McLaughlin (2022) “Including Edinburgh associated thinkers: supporting the inclusion of Edinburgh associated thinkers within Edinburgh University’s undergraduate Politics courses” Notes on this edition This article is an extract of a larger work for the 2022 Summer sitting of the SLICC course. In this extract a discussion of the current approach to teaching Hume […]